super messy

Nick has gone to some "super" party or something, so the blog is going unmanned today.

And I have decided to clean up my office.

A couple weeks ago, Nick posted some pictures he took of my office while he was "job shadowing" me. To be honest, the pictures actually show an office that is far more organized and orderly than this place where I am currently sitting.

This is horrible, and I am steeling myself to get it done -- to haul out what must be hundreds of pounds of papers and... do what with them?

Gah.

Nick will be back eventually. He will not recognize the place when he returns. He'll probably think I've been killed or something.

Just a heads-up to people in the Los Angeles area:

Next Saturday, February 13, I will be speaking on a panel at the California Teachers of English (CATE) conference along with 5 other Southern California authors. It should be an interesting discussion: all about writing YA with normal, mortal, non-vampire characters.

Go figure... who'd ever think you could actually write books about being a human being?

Clean up time.

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By Nick Sweeney, Grade 11

Mr. Smith gave me back my story. He said this is "Round One."

He took the time to sit down and explain the things he wrote on it, too. And it wasn't that bad at all.

I realized a couple of things when we had the chance to go through and talk about my story. First, I really started to understand the idea of "editing" for writing. I always thought about "editing" like edited for television -- you know, where certain stuff gets cut out because you don't want people to see it. But it wasn't really like that. Sure, Mr. Smith showed me a handful of sentences that he said were unnecessary -- because the readers already knew that stuff and it was like I was hitting them over the head. And I saw that by taking a couple sentences out, my story did move along much better.

Mr. Smith always told us that about editing, but I guess until you go through it, it's hard to understand.

And I also realized something else Mr. Smith had been telling us, but it never sank in: that it's impossible to edit your own work. He says that when writers "edit" their own work, they are really just revising it, that actual, honest editing, by definition, means an objective set of eyes is added to the team.

It's like seeing the work through a different lens, which is why Drew put this picture on today's blog post. Mr. Smith is letting me read The Marbury Lens from his typeset galley pages (even though he said there were mistakes on them -- and he put a sticky note on every page he had a problem with -- even though I can't "see" what the big deal is), and he told me I could write about it if I didn't give away anything in the story.

I am about halfway through it, and I have to say that it really creeps me out in a lot of ways. First, not just because it's scary and stuff, but when I read a book, if I really like it, I imagine myself as being the main character. And this one is really weird because I really feel myself wanting to be inside the story, like the main character, a kid named Jack, but at the same time, the things that happen to him are totally terrifying. So, it's really cool how he pulls that off, even if it makes me feel very uncomfortable.

But Mr. Smith showed me some of the letters and email he got when in the path of falling objects came out, and he thinks it's funny how many people said things like you have to be crazy to think up stuff like this. Well, I won't spoil anything, but if you think a writer has to be crazy to write stuff like in the path of falling objects, then all I can say is they will probably come and lock Smith away after The Marbury Lens hits the shelves.

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By Nick Sweeney, Grade 11

So while I'm waiting for Mr. Smith to give me his comments on the story I wrote, I decided to ask him about what he meant by the things he hated about being a writer.

As usual, it was hard for me to take notes when he talked for two reasons. First, the way Mr. Smith talks is really confusing. It's like watching a film that has been spliced up and then put back together with the clips all out of order. Second, I kept on wondering if he was just making me wait before he gave me any reaction about what I had written to try to teach me some kind of lesson about writing.

Either way, it was distracting and I didn't really like it.

But here are the things I jotted down that Mr. Smith said he hated about writing. He said that sometimes, he could get so frustrated and in what he calls one of his "bad days" that he thinks about quitting, but he said he would never really do that because quitting is too easy and he liked making himself suffer.

Mr. Smith said one of his favorite quotes was from Dostoevsky, and, I think, it was something like "Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."

I don't really know what that means. Maybe I will when I'm as old as Mr. Smith.

Anyway, here are the things Mr. Smith told me he hated about being a writer:

Mr. Smith said, "It sucks being an author. I've said it before... I do not love to write, but I can't do anything about it, either, because the alternative (not writing) is much worse. It sucks being an author because I've never been extremely self-confident, anyway, and although I never cared for a moment about making money from writing, I actually never felt driven to have lots of people read my stuff (that still freaks me out). And I've always hated business. I hate the business part of writing. I hate everything about doing business. That's why I'm an artist, I guess. Whatever that means. It sucks being an author because bookstores are really nice to me when I come in (they treat me like I'm special and look over my shoulder like they're expecting someone to come along and tell me it's time for a diaper change) when I get lost trying to find books about regular people in a YA section filled with magic and the undead. It sucks being an author because nothing happens on my schedule, the busy times all come when I least expect them and when my family is counting on me for other things. And it especially sucks being an author because I don't think my family and friends get it. They think it's all like being on a luxury cruise and being spoon fed or something. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. Because at this point, I think I've just about given up everything else, anyway."

After listening to him for so long, and wondering why he never said the first thing about the story I wrote, I was beginning to feel a little worn out, too. So I asked him what he liked about being a writer, and unknowingly I inspired him to talk non-stop and scattered, as he does, for another hour-and-a-half.

-- Nick S.

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By Nick Sweeney, Grade 11

I did it. It took me two-and-a-half days, but I finished a story and gave it to Mr. Smith. It was embarrassing doing that. I wonder if he feels that way when he hands in something that he wrote.

He can't. He's a pro, right?

So I don't know what I was expecting, but he just folded my story in half and tucked it in his inside jacket pocket. Then Mr. Smith said, "I'll read it and then in a couple of days I'll write my thoughts about it. That's how it works."

And I thought, A couple days?

Maybe Mr. Smith could tell what I was thinking. Maybe he did feel stupid, like me, every time he handed something in, even if he got to hand things in to people in New York City, and I was only handing something in to a guy who lived with horses and Druids up in the mountains.

So he shrugged and said, again, that it was how things were for a writer. Mr. Smith said that waiting and not knowing was a big part of what writers had to put up with, and that they were some of the things that everyone hated about being a writer.

I said, so you mean there are things that you hate about being a writer?

Mr. Smith laughed at that. I mean, I read what he wrote about the things he hated about "Young Adult Literature," and they made sense to me, even if what he wrote ticked a lot of people off. But I never knew there could be things about being a writer that he found unpleasant, too.

So, he said, let me tell you, Nick.

And that's what I'll report on next time.

-- Nick S.

great cover

Nick gets the day off.

He owes the boss some work, anyway.

Yesterday, we saw the final cover art for this fall's release of The Marbury Lens.

As book covers go, it is a masterpiece. If you saw this looking at you in a bookstore, how could you not be drawn to it? How could you possibly look away? And, then, if you read the opening page, it's all over. You will not be able to stop reading it.

Just like what happens to Jack in the story. But we can't say more about that now.

Few book covers really convey so much of a story. We've spent quite some time looking at all the little details in this one, and there is a lot to it.

This is one of those book covers where you will read a certain part of the book and then look back to the jacket to see if what you think you see there is really there.

I don't know if he gets enough credit, but Rich Deas, the Art Director for Feiwel and Friends, outdid himself on this one. If this isn't the best cover Rich has ever done, then we need to see the rest.

Oh yeah... this is coming in poster form, buttons, shirts, and bookmarks. We will try to have some available when Smith goes to the SCIBA Literacy Dinner in Los Angeles on February 20, and, with more certainty, by the time he shows at the Family Festival of Books on February 28 in Chino.

More on these events coming soon.

Nick, get back to work.

-- Drew

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By Nick Sweeney, Grade 11

I am finally writing something.

Listening to what Mr. Smith had to say helped me a lot. I realized that there were plenty of times when I've felt stuck, confused; like I didn't know which way to go. So, he said, take one of those times and make it bigger.

He told me about something a friend of his said. Mr. Smith said there is a very talented author named Kerry Madden, and that she tells her students to take their main character and put him up in a tree, and then throw rocks at him. He told me that he didn't know whether that was Kerry's lesson or somebody else's, but he read about it one time in something she had written, and it rang true to him.

It's kind of a simpler version of what Steinbeck said, I think -- about people caught up in their human lives and how evil constantly respawns. Anyway, it made sense to me.

So, we talked for a while about what Mr. Smith said was a universal story about teenage confusion. And he told me to consider different Points of View, too. (He meant as a writing technique -- first or third person).

Then he gave me a writing game, too: Mr. Smith said for me to think about an object in my room, something small that could be carried around. He said it could be anything, even an article of clothing, but that it had to have some connection to me.

Then he told me to put that object somewhere: in a library, in the middle of a field, in the frozen food case at a supermarket; and tell a story about how it got there, how it connects to a character, maybe how the character is led to it.

Mr. Smith said this wasn't an idea for a story, but it could be if I wanted it. It was just an exercise for building what he called "connective tissue" between people, things, and events which is the stuff story writing is made of. Mr. Smith said exercises like that are for young writers what going to the gym is for athletes. Sometimes it can be a drag and not very exciting, but you don't consciously realize you're gaining benefit from the trip.

Mr. Smith said he's got hundreds of exercises like that.

Then I really started to understand what he meant the other week when he told me that being a writer is kind of like being in Boot Camp.

Anyway, after talking to him and thinking about all the stuff he told me, I knew I was ready to write what I'd been thinking about -- and it didn't have anything to do with all the specific stuff we talked about.

-- Nick S.

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By Nick Sweeney, Grade 11

Mr. Smith still is not back from unwriting, and he does not want to come back to the blog, so I am still in charge.

Yesterday, I wrote how, in a panic, I went up to the mountains to find Mr. Smith so I could talk to him about my Writer's Block.

I know that Mr. Smith doesn't believe that such a thing exists, but I was hoping he could help unjam my thoughts.

So, from the other side of his sauna door, he told me how a lot of people believe that there are only two kinds of stories: A man goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town.

He told me that was total reductionist nonsense, but if I really wanted to simplify things, Mr. Smith said how John Steinbeck believed there was only one story. And, through the glass of his door, Mr. Smith quoted Steinbeck:

"I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one . . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, and in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil... and it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good... is immortal."

And, then he asked me, did I believe that?

I said I didn't know.

And Mr. Smith said, good, because he didn't know, either, but he thought that Steinbeck was probably closer to the truth than anyone else.

And then he said, Nick, you're stuck, you're frustrated, and you don't know which way to go. Isn't there something universal in that confusion you feel? Something that every teenage boy -- every human -- can identify with? I bet you've been stuck and confused plenty of times.

I said yeah.

And he said, well, why don't you tell me about it.

I started to see what he was getting at. And Mr. Smith said, I have a lot of little games you can do with objects around your house that you are familiar with, that might jog your head into remembering one of the stories you have to tell. They're in there, I know it, you just are so afraid of not looking good that you don't want to let them out. Now go home and write your story, and if you still can't I'll give you a little game to think about.

-- Nick S.